Saturday, 12 August 2017

Trump rules in war agaisnt oli-rich Venezuela

Donald
Trump has stated that he is considering military action against
Venezuela. The oil rich South American country has just sworn in its
new Constituent Assembly which President Nicholas Maduro’s
supporters control after July’s election for the new chamber.

The
United States continues to fund the right wing opposition who are
opposed to Maduro’s reforms.

Today,
when asked about his plans for Venezuela, Donald Trump responded in
the following way,

“We
have many options for Venezuela… the people are suffering and
they’re dying.We have many options for Venezuela including a
possible military option if necessary”.

The
realistic prospect is that a US led war on Venezuela is highly more
likely than one of North Korea. As I wrote recently in The Duran,

“From
a propaganda angle, a so-called regime change war on Venezuela would
be far less impactful than one on North Korea. Fewer Americans see
Venezuela as a cartoon villain vis-a-vis North Korea and furthermore,
much of the US based Latin American community would resent a war
against a smaller Latin American country, especially a war waged by
Donald Trump who has terrible PR among Latin Americans.

From
a military point of view as well as a political perspective, it would
however be a safe option. Venezuela’s armed forces cannot complete
with those of the US and since Russia closed its base in Cuba in the
year 2002, Latin America is from a military point of view, an
American peninsula, even though politically the United States has
lost tremendous amounts of clout over the last decades as many
far-right dictatorships across Latin America have fallen to
democratic socialist governments.

While
Russia and China would likely condemn such a war, they would not
participate in the conflict as they might do in Korea”.